Yea, got it now. It was just as ridiculous an oversight as I had originally thought. I kept getting to the point in the problem where I had (1-a)/(a(a-1)) and going, "Oh, I can't divide those binomials!" Factor out a -1 from the numerator, cancel out the resulting binomial with the denominator and there's the answer... staring me right in the face. I'm rather embarrassed that I had so much trouble with such a simple problem, and that I forgot such a basic rule. Thanks for the help.